Poll shows National dropping to 29 percent

Voters facing a tight race will find the distance between the two largest political parties has shrunk to two percentage points. The National Party has fallen to 29 percent support, while Labour remains at 27 percent. This marks a three point drop for National from last week, when the party recorded 32 percent support.

The shift is visible in the latest 1News-Verian poll released on October 27. National’s decline has opened space for its coalition partners. Act has risen by one point to reach 12 percent. New Zealand First has climbed two points to 10 percent. The Green Party has lost one point, settling at 15 percent. Opportunity has slipped slightly to 6 percent. Te Pāti Māori sits at 0.1 percent, its lowest result in this polling series, though the party is running a candidate-only campaign.

Seat counts based purely on the party vote suggest the right of center bloc holds 61 seats. National would take 34 seats, Act would secure 15, and New Zealand First would claim 12. The left of center bloc, comprising Labour and the Greens, would hold 56 seats in total. Labour would take 33 seats and the Greens 18. Opportunity would hold eight seats, placing the party in a position to decide which side forms the government.

The final size of Parliament may change if Te Pāti Māori wins four electorates and the Te Tai Tokerau Party wins one. This scenario would create an overhang, adding extra seats beyond the standard 120. If Te Pāti Māori wins only one seat, the right of center bloc could govern without needing Opportunity’s support. The polling data represents a snapshot of support rather than a prediction of the final election result.

Support for the preferred prime minister has also shifted. Christopher Luxon has surged to 24 percent, an increase of four points. Chris Hipkins currently stands at 18 percent. The poll surveyed 1,003 eligible voters between October 15 and October 19. The sample included 500 mobile phone respondents and 503 online panel users. The maximum sampling error is approximately plus or minus 3.1 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.

The data was weighted to align with Statistics New Zealand population counts for age, gender, region, ethnic identification, and education level. Undecided voters, non-voters, and those who refused to answer were excluded from the party support figures. Party support percentages were rounded to whole numbers, except for those below 4.5 percent, which are reported to one decimal place. The mobile sample was selected through random dialing using probability sampling, while the online sample was drawn from an online panel.